 OK, good morning everyone and welcome to the 8th meeting of the Local Government communities committee. Can you remind everyone present to turn off mobile phones as the meeting papers are provided in digital format tablets, that tablets devices may be used by members during the meeting. That's really a polite we have seen, we've seen use using our phones or iPads or whatever we're looking at briefing papers for the committee. We've not received any apologies, we've got a full house again today which is I. We move to agenda item 1, which is a decision on taking business in private. The committee is invited to consider whether to take item 9, consideration of its draft report on the council tax substitution of proportion, Scotland order 2016 in private. Are we all agreed? We now move to agenda item 2, local government boundary commission for Scotland's fifth electoral review. The committee will take evidence in local government boundary commission for Scotland's fifth electoral review and the Scottish Government's subsequent response from a panel of witnesses followed by the Minister for Parliamentary Business thereafter. This session follows on from the last meeting where we heard from the local government boundary commission for Scotland on their review of themselves. We move to panel 1. This morning, I would like to welcome Charles Ripcae, head of governance and law, Argyll and Bute Council, Paul Vaughan, head of community and corporate development, Fife Council, Kate Gallaglay-Swan, campaign organiser, electoral reform society and Councillor David Neil, president of COSLA. You are all very welcome, and I believe that a couple of you have got some brief opening statements to make before we head to questions. Kate, maybe take your first. First of all, thank you very much for having me. My name is Kate Gallaglay-Swan, I am a campaign organiser for the electoral reform society. We had three specific things that we wanted to point out in response to the Scottish Government's response to the boundary commission. First of all, it is important for us to discuss or at least lay some of our opinions out about the context in which we are giving those comments. There exists a democratic deficit at a local level in Scotland, so to comment on moving boundaries seems like it is just scratching the surface of the necessary reforms that we need in local government. That tinkering of the reforms was revealed in the commission's recommendations through a few tensions that we felt were present, because the commission was necessarily constrained by the outdated legislation from 1973. For example, a focus on decreasing representation in rural areas and outlining the comparisons of representativeness between rural areas and urban areas. In our opinion, the decrease in rural areas goes against most evidence in the necessary reforms that we need at a local level in Scotland's local democracy. The second thing that we would like to point out is a specific problem with electoral parity. Despite being the electoral reform society, we think that focusing a priority on electoral parity is also outdated. We have a Parliament that wants to see communities run by them, rather than for them. However, the prioritisation of electoral parity is in direct tension with that philosophy, and we would like to see more emphasis on recognising communities as units of decision making. Lastly, we would like to raise a concern about the process specifically. It has been mentioned before in the committee, but it is important for us to recognise again that, while we sympathise with the decision that politicians made in rejecting certain recommendations from the Boundary Commission, the fact that the rejection happened with an independent commission is something that has to be recognised, and there are reasons for it, which might again point to necessary reforms and the systemic problems facing Scotland's local democracy. Thank you very much, Keith. Thank you very much. Chair, can I start by saying that here in Scotland, we are out of step internationally in terms of local representation and local democracy? It is important to remind the committee that causal ambitions go well beyond the current work of the Boundary Commission. We have a much bigger vision to create a stronger local democracy in Scotland, which is more local, more empowered and more representative, and also more, in this hard work to say, participative. Both representation and participation are the two sides of the same coin. We had the independent commission in strengthening local democracy, and we found that, for its size, Scotland is almost as unique in the low number of local authorities that cover very large populations in geographic areas. The ratio of citizens to local elected members in Scotland is approximately four and a half thousand per councillor. In England, it is one to three thousand. In Germany, it is one to four hundred, and if you go to Sweden, it is one to one hundred and fifty. European local authorities cover an average of twenty thousand people. Here in Scotland, the average is one hundred and sixty five thousand. In Denmark, which has got the same population in Scotland, has got 98 municipalities in five regions. Here in Scotland, we have got Highland Council, which is the same size as Belgium geographically, but Belgium has got over 500 councils at the level closest to the community. Local democracy is not particularly healthy here in Scotland. We pride ourselves in being democratic, but if democracy is reduced to going and putting your cross or your number on a ballot paper once every, it turns out about 12 months now, it is more or less an annual event. If that is what democracy is all about, then we are not doing it very well. If we are going to be serious about participative democracy, we need to do it differently, so our ambitions go way beyond the work of the Boundary Commission. Fair much, Councillor Neil. We will move to questions now and we will pick up on what are those points that were made in those introductory statements. I ask Mr Gwair to come into the first question. Good morning, panel. I asked the panel at our last session about the 10 per cent cap on changes. The answer given was about minimising disruption to the electorate, although the phrase getting to whole numbers was also mentioned. I would be interested to hear the panel's reflections on that restriction on changes. You already spoke about reducing councillor numbers as being problematic rather than helpful. In the case of the methodology that you used, is that artificial, if you like, 10 per cent? Anyone to come in on that? Councillor Neil? Certainly, as an artificial figure to say that you cannot move more than 10 per cent in either direction means that you ignore good solid evidence that would lead you to move in another direction. I will use one local authority that I know particularly well, my own, North Ayrshire. North Ayrshire currently has 30 elected members. Its population would justify having 36 elected elected members, but because of the constraints put on by the Boundary Commission, it will not move more than 10 per cent in either direction. North Ayrshire, in common with lots of local authorities, is working very hard at locality planning, aligning with other public agencies. The irony is that the only part of the public sector that is not going to be aligned to locality planning is the elected members because of the artificial constraints placed there by the Boundary Commission. I want to come in on that particular point. Other witnesses are desperately trying not to make eye contact with me there. Ruth, do you want to come back in? No, maybe later on. It might be an opportunity, whether councillor Neil or any of our other witnesses, to say a little bit more. I used expression artificial to illustrate the point that Ruth McGill was making about that 10 per cent variation in change. Is there anything else that you feel might have been a bit too rigid or too artificial about the methodology that you might want to put on the record here today? Yes, I think that from our Gallan Bute Council's point of view, we believe that our islands and our unique geography, the sparsity of our population, should have allowed us to retain our councillor numbers, which was eventually the decision of Scottish ministers. We made a number of arguments in the written submissions that the committee had about why that was important in terms of number of our councillors' awards, where they have to travel with ferries or even planes to get between one part of their award and the other. We felt that there was a need for there to be enough flexibility for the Boundary Commission to reflect that. We made submissions around that in terms of departing from party. However, because of the preeminence of party and their considerations, we weren't successful in that argument until the Scottish Minister's decision. We certainly feel that there should be more flexibility to recognise these unique geographical situations, particularly with island communities, where the island councils have that benefit, but our Gallan Bute Council didn't get the benefit for its islands, if you like. In the submissions that Fife presented, there were probably three points that we had in terms of the methodology. One was around the actual use of the index multiple deprivation as a proxy for workload. The committee have looked at that. The use of the 3,000 figure in terms of the population and looking at that from an urban rural split was, for example, arbitrary, given the different scales and sizes of local authorities. The third point was about the impact that it had on mixed urban rural authorities such as Fife, where we have such a wide variation in terms of very small villages up to fairly sizable towns. The way that the boundaries are then constructed didn't lend itself to recognising that split, that mixed geography. I think that it might be picks up something that Katie said about the difficulty that the current methodology has in terms of recognising urban rural splits. That's helpful. I know that members all want to come back and talk about island communities and deprivation factors as we explore questioning further. Councillor Neill, you want to come in? Again, using my own personal experience, Ruth will understand what I'm about to say, since Ruth used to represent the same word as I do. I can stand in the centre of my word and walk 15 minutes in any direction, and I will get to the boundary of the word. There are other local representatives, the length and breadth of Scotland, who couldn't drive 15 hours in get through and through the centre of their word to the boundary. We've already heard the experiences of people having to use ferries to move from area to area. Why do we insist on having a system that is one-size-fits-all? We can either have three member wards or four member wards anywhere in Scotland. The island's bill is currently looking as I understand it and having smaller numbers for the islands as in Western Isles, Orkney and Shetland. In my own council area, half the landmass of North Ayrshire is the island of Arran. The mainland has a population of 135,000 and Arran has a population of 5,000. Why can't we have a single member ward for the island of Arran? The legislation doesn't allow it. Why do we have one-size-fits-all? Rurality is important. I'm waiting for Mr Gibson in just a second. There's a more general point about—sorry, Katie, I'll take you in first, actually—sorry. No problem. Again, I want to highlight the point from the Electoral Reform Society's point of view about electoral parity. We understand that legislation prioritises electoral parity and we think that that's outdated. If we want communities to be run by them, we need to have a way of emphasising the importance of communities as units of decision-making. There's a spectrum that goes from mathematically seeing elections as boundaries that are technocratically decided via electoral parity. At the other end of that spectrum is seeing communities on par with one another. Somewhere in the middle, because of the diversity of Scotland, as has been outlined by my other witnesses, we need to find something that works for Scotland. That's not a one-size-fits-all, but it works for the diversity and the different sorts of communities that we have in Scotland, because the borders in Glasgow isn't Lewis. That's helpful, and it means that I'm not going to ask my supplementary questions, so we'll take Mr Gibson now. Thanks very much, and of course, Ilyna Vaughan is in my own Cunningham North constituency, and I did ask questions about the single member for Arran. Frankly, my view is that we should go back to first place to post for local authority elections. I say that as a person who originally moved the STVB, our party's policy, some 20 years ago, but I think that 10 years of experience tells me that it wasn't the right thing to do. In terms of Argyll and Bute, I want to ask, you say in your executive summary in an XBA that there's a risk of the impact of new word arrangements in attracting a diverse range of councils. It's an issue across Scotland, given the low remuneration relative to the burden that councils have. I wonder if you can talk about the issues that Argyll and Bute has created in terms of being able to attract people, not just pensioners, for example, to stand, but folk of working age who might have a strong contribution to make, but for economic and family and other reasons that they are unable to do so, given the structures that we have at present. Yes, no, thanks for that. I think the view of Argyll and Bute council is that we have our meetings held mainly at Kilmawry. We have area committees that meet in regional centres, but we have most of our committee meetings at Kilmawry. That can mean an overnight stay for somebody just to attend a tour meeting if they live on the island of Islay. If you don't drive, your public transport links are very poor, so you can have a difficulty getting to meetings. I know some councillors who have to find a lift with another councillor to get to the meeting, even just travelling 20 miles, because there aren't the infrastructure links that fit in with the timetable for meetings. If you are looking at standing for the council, people who live in Argyll and Bute are very familiar with the council. The council is the biggest employer in the area, apart from the MOD. People are familiar with the council, they know how it works, and they are aware of how it does its business at the moment in terms of its meetings at Luckiolpedd that happened during the day. All of those things, I think, can present a barrier to people who have childcare issues or who have other issues about transport mobility. That must be a barrier. I don't have any empirical evidence for that, to be honest with you, but it's a view that we have from councillors who have difficulty travelling at the moment. It hasn't stopped them standing, but it does create barriers for them. Sometimes we have to find special arrangements to get them home at night if a meeting runs on. Those are the kind of challenges that face the existing cohort of councillors. We recognise that in terms of the induction materials that we are putting forward for the forthcoming elections next year and trying to encourage a more diverse group of people to come forward. The council is currently reflecting its political management arrangements to consider what changes it might make to make it more user-friendly. That is on-going at the moment. How concerned are you feel in terms of the issue of parity? As Electroformed Society says in its submission, Orkney's only 813 electors, an average per ward, are expected to have significantly more than Argyll and Bute, which must really make it difficult in terms of the size of some of the wards geographically. Yes, some of the wards are very large. As I said already, some councillors regularly take planes to travel from Oban to Tyree or Cal to do surgeries. Many councillors use ferries to get from their home to council meetings or to visit constituents. It is a big issue for us in terms of the workload that is there and it is spread out. With the advent of new technology, that helps people, but there is still a very large centre or group of population who still want to meet councillors face to face and to deal with them on the doorstep. Our councillors are very visible in their communities if you are in your local supermarket, your local hotel, everybody knows who their councillor is and you are never off duty. That is what the councillors tell me. That is my experience, I have seen it myself. They are constantly at work because they are never far away from their communities and even though it may be a spread out community, the councillors that we have, many of them serve for a long time and they are very well known across the large constituents. I know how that feels. That is just a wonderful question for me. On the issue of parity, I can understand the frustration, and David and Neil talked about the unsituation too. The other side of the coin is that, for example, if you did not have parity, you could have a situation whereby you have one ward, which is 3,000 electors and another ward with 1,000 each. When it comes to making up with the council, that means that the votes of the smaller wards with only 1,000 members are three times more valuable at the council and that could create a disproportionate... You could change the proportion of the council and therefore, obviously, influence where the council devotes its resources, etc. For example, in Arran alone, it is only 3 per cent of the population in North Ayrshire at half the land mass. The island, I am sure, would like to have one multi-member ward, but it then could have 10 per cent of the council with only 3 per cent of the population and, therefore, it would have more influence, perhaps, in other areas. How do you square that circle? That is the very difficult one. That is why parity is in there. Yes, and I am a lawyer by profession, so I understand the legislative background. I have worked as an elect in the ministry at a senior deputy returning officer for the last 20 years or so, so I recognise that. In some respects, I have a sympathy for the view that parity is an important consideration. I am also aware that, politically, the council's view was that parity did not achieve what we wanted. We were looking for a departure from parity on special reasons, but my personal view is that you have to take some account of parity because of the reasons that you have outlined. I know that some of the witnesses have a different view, and I can understand that view as well, but, simply, with my background as an electoral administrator, I feel more comfortable in recognising the benefits of parity, although we thought, in our Gallan Bute Council, that we had made a significant argument to depart from it, so I want to have my cake and eat it, as you can see. All of us do, including all 32 local authorities, but Councillor Anil, is it a broader view? My colleague is a lawyer by profession and I am a blether by profession. Parity is important because we concentrate on representative democracy. We need to concentrate on both sides of the coin, including participative democracy, which are both equally important. That means that we should be placing more emphasis on the participation with people who have been involved in the budgetary process, people who have been involved in the decision-making process, and they should be involved in the community that is important to them, not an artificial community that is drawn up by someone sitting in an office in Edinburgh, Glasgow or elsewhere or, indeed, in the council headquarters. Again, I will use North Ayrshire as an example—a 130,000 of a population. No one lives in North Ayrshire, nor does a single person live in North Ayrshire, nor does he live in Irvine, Brodick, or Solkitts. That is the place that means something to them, not the artificial boundaries that we have. I will take Mr Whiteman in a second, but, just as we mop up some supplementaries in relation to that, the theme has very much been on how the methodology does or does not take into account rurality or island communities in participative democracy. I will be quick to mop up some additional questions in relation to that, if there are any, before we move to wider supplementaries. Can I have a view from the panel on their own view of the checks and balances that are being put in place by the boundary commission when we look at the whole urban rurality issue? Also, we find that every local government election turnout is an issue, and that has to have something to do with the size, the dimensions of a boundary, the locations of a ward, because there is not the same engagement between the public and the candidates or the election. What does the panel feel about that? In my opinion, being a serving councillor for the last 17, 18 years, the links are getting worse and worse and becoming more and more unapparent as we move forward. I want to comment on that. Many, many reasons for that. The size of wards is part of it. The ability of local members to influence what actually happens. We have seen nine years of a council tax freeze, that is being replaced with a cap being placed upon it. I cannot go to my electorate and say, do you want me to spend more money on certain projects? Central Scottish Government does not allow that level of flexibility. Therefore, people have come to the conclusion that there is no point in voting for the council, because it cannot influence what happens. We need to get local democracy back into the heart of our communities, get participation and make a real decision back to the local level. A supplementary question. Kate, do you want to come in on that? I will echo what David was saying. Those things definitely do impact voter turnout, but, as David said, there is a plethora of other things. He outlines participation, and I agree completely, but also giving real power to local communities to be able to make decisions and do things for their communities would encourage more people to engage in the local democracy. At the moment, I think that there is a great lack. That might be a good opportunity to put on the record on behalf of the committee that, next week's committee meeting, we are actually having a round table with the theme being how we increase participation and voter turnout in local government elections. It is something that the committee is conscious of, and it is something that we are keen to play our part in helping to improve that situation. I am sure that anyone following this committee will want to see that evidence session next week, or perhaps, even if they have suggestions, even if this late-stage time is short, perhaps he drops an email, and we can raise those questions to discuss them at next week's meeting. A couple of supplementaries in relation to that. Thank you all for coming to give evidence this morning. It seems to me that we are going a bit beyond the boundaries of a boundary review. I was listening to my colleague Kenneth Gibson and what he said earlier about the actual changes to local government. As one of the few members who voted at the time to retain first passed the post and actually did so on the grounds of local democracy and accountability in smaller areas, I wondered whether any of the panel would like to comment on whether or not we should be looking at that legislation, post-legislative scrutiny, if you like, of the whole legislation that changed the whole system of local government and representation. Should we be taking a bigger look at that, rather than just this morning, we are just simply talking about the Boundary Commission and what the recommendations are from that. Any takers on that, Katie? Sorry, David. I think that the conversation around against STV is blaming STV for problems, wider problems than local democracy that are not the voting system. We have issues of voter turnout, we have issues of representativeness, like David outlined earlier. In the international comparisons, we are very underrepresented country at the local level. The issue is not necessarily with STV or the voting system, but with the wider reforms that need to happen. I completely agree that the boundaries of the discussion on the Boundary Commission are becoming more expansive, because the situation is serious about local democracy. Unless we take that into account in any conversation about changes to boundaries, it is not being as fully fleshed out as it can be. We are not taking the opportunity to have that discussion. The vision has to be big for how we want to improve participation and improve our local democracy. Unless we bring up those things in this arena, then where else can we? Could I perhaps pose it as a question? Why do we have a one-size-fits-all approach to diverse communities across Scotland? Why does it have to be STV, multi-member wards everywhere? Why can't we, for example—it might work well in the city of Edinburgh to have multi-member wards, but it does not work in Argyll and Buton, might be it does not work in Highland. Why do we need one system? Does anyone else want to come in on that? Can I just check on the question? Does that refer back to your initial point about I use the word artificial? It must be a three or a four-member ward. I would keep multi-member wards in a single transferable vote, but as you said, there could be a two-member ward or you could use STV with a single person to be elected. Is it back to that flexibility of approach in relation to the size and the amount of elected representatives per council wards? You could use a plethora of systems if that suited local areas. You could amend single transferable vote to have single member wards. Still getting elected would be 50 plus one of the votes cast. There is a variety of different ways, but my basic point is why do we have to do it the same everywhere? Before I take Andy Wightman to any other witnesses, I want to add anything to that. Thank you for coming along today. Obviously, we are looking at the boundary commission and what has been interesting in this work is the tension, if you like, between having a system that is relatively objective and minimises the extent of political interference into setting boundaries and councillor numbers and all the rest of it, which obviously has dangers to it. However, at the same time, allowing for the kind of flexibility that it reflects, it recognises that Glasgow is very different from Argyll and Bute. I think that what is clear from this evidence is that this is a conversation that will continue. I think that what is clear from this morning is that looking at boundaries and councillor numbers and parity and all the rest of it is just one part of a bigger discussion about electoral systems, about things like councillor remuneration and all the rest of it, which itself is part of a bigger conversation about the future of local democracy, which you have talked about this morning. My question is, is it time, obviously, the evidence that we have heard suggests that changes are required in how we arrive at boundaries and councillor numbers in terms of timings of reviews or criteria that are to be used, flexibility or whatever, and we will consider and report on that in due course. However, is it time in this Parliament for a more fundamental reform of the whole system of local democracy? As you point out, some of those things are intimately linked with other aspects of our local democracy that we cannot consider in isolation within a review of how the Boundary Commission discharges its functions. I have been having discussions with the Scottish Government about legislation that is currently going through the islands bill, for example. I asked again at the COSLA conference of Derek Mackay as to whether the Government, or indeed any of the political parties, would promote a bill of permissiveness to allow local communities, local authorities, public agencies to work in ways that are different from what we currently do. I will just pluck this as an example out of the air again. The islands, the three island councils, have at various times over the years talked about a single public agency for the islands. If you had the local authority, the health board, the local enterprise company, all working as one, would that not make sense? It might be good that you could do something like that in the islands. It might be that you would want the cities through the city regions to be working closer with other public agencies to get that type of change to take place now. The legislative process would be torturous. Let's get a bill that gives permission, allows that to happen where there is local desire and a local request for it to happen. I also want to come in on that. Do you want to add anything to that, Mr Whiteman? No, I was just reflecting on the evidence that you have given this morning to get some idea of your level of ambition for this Parliament in this wider arena at this early stage. We can go through the next five years doing little inquiries and boundary commissions and council immunisation and various other modest things, but there is also the opportunity to do something rather more fundamental. To anyone watching, the evidence session is on local government boundary commission, process and methodology and how that fits into local democracy. However, Mr White has made a general appeal to contact us about what you would like the committee to look at. Please do that. We are always willing to listen to your ideas. Indeed, we have already met with some of you to discuss how that could happen, but I think that that is reasonable to say, Mr Whiteman. I might reframe the question that Andy Wightman asked, because the Government is looking at reforming community planning partnerships, extending participatory budgeting, and the community empowerment agenda. We are looking at a better way of the process by which we agree local government boundaries. I know that there will be an election bill when we will ask this to the minister when he appears before us a bit later. There will be an election bill at some point in the future in the lifetime of this Parliament. I do not know what is going to be in it, but that is a theme to hook something on to, I suppose, Councillor O'Neill in relation to maybe not all the ambitions that you have but tweaking some of those processes to better represent communities in terms of parity, where it is achievable but also to identifiable communities and have them more involved. If you want to make any comments on how local government boundaries could hook into some of that, that might be an appropriate thing to do that we could then take up with the minister, but I thought that it was important to put that on the record of it. I wanted to add to that or make a comment, Mr Vaughan. I can make a comment on that. The crucial part for us in terms of the response that we gave was about how it related to local community planning. Fife has set up with seven area committees. Those committees were made up from amalgamations of the multi-member wards. For us, it was quite critical that the wards and the changes that are made allow us to continue the work that has been going on over the past number of years in terms of working at a partnership level recognisable as far as we can local communities, given that electoral structure. In terms of anything that goes forward, it is crucial that we join up the community empowerment part and the community participation part alongside what is going on in terms of the representative democracy part. It is a clear way that we feel that we can make a difference and are making differences to local communities through that local community planning approach. Is that something that is keen to be constructive in relation to working in partnership with local government, even though you are clearly disappointed with what the outcome has been in relation to Fife King? Will you be keen to work with Government to improve that in the future? Yes, I think so. I think that we still find the examples of different parts of Government, not always but talking the same language in terms of what we are trying to do in terms of community empowerment and in terms of that community participation. I think that that goes right across all the different public services that are being delivered in a local area. It is important that local people tell us that. They want to see a way of engaging with us that allows them to make the changes that allow for variation in what is going on in their local communities that better suits that. There is a lot of work that we do trying to maintain those arrangements, which are over and above anything to do with representative democracy. Thanks, convener. There are a couple of areas that I want to explore. I will take the first one, because there might be some questions on that. The use of deprivation as a factor in determining councillor numbers seems to have come from left field for a number of councils. In fact, we had evidence from East Renfrewshire and East Lothian complaining about how it came rather late in the day, a change in methodology. I wonder what your views are on the lateness and the use of deprivation. Any tips on that? I know that Don is sitting behind me. I think that he wishes that he had never heard the word deprivation. It did come late. Like all politicians, I get gut feelings for things, but when I get a gut feeling, I then go and look for evidence to either prove or disprove what it is. There was no evidence for deprivation to be included, there was no work done, there was no study done to see whether that was what it was all about. There have also been artificial barriers put in place. We talked about some of them earlier, but I think that it is important to say that local government as a whole do not object to the proposals because they do not like them per se. It is because the methodology that was used was not right. If we are going to put different factors into it, there needs to be an understanding of how those factors are being decided, and that did not happen in this instance. To be fair to the Boundary Commission, I think that they now understand that and have indicated that they would like earlier engagement next time around. I broadly agree that we did not really understand the relevance of the deprivation figure to councillor workload, as it was portrayed. Some of the evidence that we have presented showed that it was a simple arbitrary, especially using the 15 per cent figure. It did not really help. There is a final thing, which is that the SIMD is a geographical representation of deprivation and does not really get to people. A lot of work has to be done to get to the point that it understands the deprivation that individuals and families encounter, rather than the geographies that are there. Some of the work that we have done since the latest release of the SIMD indicates that the SIMD is not a great proxy for that. The final thing that I want to add is that we were told that a study was being undertaken of council workload to see what evidence could be found. We still had never seen that final report and I think that it would still be useful to see that. I will check whether witnesses agree that deprivation should be a factor or a key factor. I would make the point that it is slightly tangential to bring it back to the deprivation factor. One of the things that MSPs get is that they get employees that may be worked for other MSPs in different parts of the country that come to work for them. They get a very good take on the type of casework that they get and how busy their office is based on the type of area that they represent. I have to say that Mary Helmsbury has significant deprivation. I have an individual who tells me that they did not realise just the significant casework that there would be compared to other parts of the country. I would strongly say that there is rural deprivation as well that has to be identified within those formulas. Does anyone argue that deprivation should not be a factor? I would argue that we should do a study to see whether it is a factor and to see what other factors there are and what factors there are in stopping people. We did touch on some of the merlars wanting to be local elected representatives, which stops women from wanting to be local elected representatives. 25 per cent of the councillors in Scotland are female. We are very lucky to get young people. Local government is more and more dominated by white middle-aged men—we—in folk of—not if only that was so. It would be nice. There are lots of things that we should be looking at. We have small pockets of deprivation within the larger data sets that cannot easily be seen. That would be masked in terms of some of the work that is done. Our councillors are familiar with those areas, and they can be very small indeed, but nevertheless they can be important. My own impression is that a councillor's workload is not just directed by deprivation. A lot of work will be around planning matters and things like that that are becoming more and more contentious. The study that is suggested is the way forward to try it, and we need to factor in rurality when the data sets are at such a level how you drill down to pick out those pockets of deprivation within a larger area that does not present in that way in the stats. It is helpful, so it is not rejecting it. It is getting a better and more clearer evidence based on understanding of the demands at places on elected representatives and feeding that into the methodology. We have spoken a lot today about the methodology, but there is also the process—I am conscious that we have got Mr Ripp in front of us—where eventually, at the end of the process, we have, within the structures that we have, if you like, Argyll and Bute, we have got satisfaction, if that is the correct word, to use in terms of outcome. However, Mr Vaughan and Fife did not get satisfaction now. If there was not a check-in balance in the system, then neither of you would have had satisfaction in relation to a local boundary commission proposal. I am not hoping—I am keen to find out whether you believe that there should be a check-in balance in the system. That statutory check-in balance sits at a ministerial level at the moment. We would be keen to know what that check-in balance should look like if it did not sit at a ministerial level and whether that should move away from politicians or whether it should be given Parliament greater scrutiny. We are wrestling with some of those things within the process as a committee as well. Any comments that you would like to make in relation to that would be quite helpful for the committee. I think that we are of the view that the Scottish Minister's involvement was important for us because it got as satisfaction as you have outlined. I think that it was important in terms of the campaign that was mounted, that it was a cross-party campaign and that it was also community-driven. None of our communities were in favour of the proposals that were coming forward. I would have thought that that gave the committee—the Scottish Minister—some comfort that the decision that was being asked for was not one to try and benefit one party. It was a genuine response from communities about their concern that the new structures would break up communities and divide communities that had a particular focus that had been developed. I believe that there should be a check-in balance. We felt that it was important to present a cross-party approach because we felt that that took the politics out of it and left it back at a community level saying that this is what the community is looking for, and that the state is cool. It is worth pointing out that I did not ask the question to work out whether Argyll and Bute had a stronger or weaker army than Fife. It was about the process behind it and whether there should be a check-in balance in the system. If there is a check-in balance in the system, you will not always be satisfied with the outcome. Clearly, Mr Vod and Fife was not satisfied with the outcome, so I appreciate that you will now want to see it a little bit in relation to the Fife situation, given Mr Ripki's comments, but it is more about whether you agree that there should be a check-in balance in the system and where that should sit. It needs to be clear who is taking the final decision in terms of what those boundaries are. The process for us, although we would have preferred at least no change, if not the changes in population leading to more councillors, the actual process was significantly improved from what had happened previously. I think that there was more transparency in our discussions with the commission and the officials at the commission in terms of the approach that they were taking. The engagement that we had with them in terms of when we realised that we were not necessarily going to maintain the councillor numbers in terms of the actual geographies was quite a good process from our idea, but that was also dammed to the fact that we spent an awful lot of time as a council working with councillors getting their views on what the changes should be with a fairly clear set of guidance from them in terms of trying to maintain that local community planning and our local area committee approach when we were looking at the boundaries that were initially presented to us so much so that the changes that we fed back were the ones that were finally done on the public consultation. However, as you said, we would have preferred that we had not really had to go through those changes at all. Katey? Put simply, yes, we think that there should be checks and balances. While, on this instance, we sympathise with the reasons the five recommendations were rejected out of the 30, we still think that that should trigger a concern and specifically looking at why the recommendations were rejected. In this case, from our perspective, it is because the 1973 legislation does not work in the guidelines. One size does not fit all, so undertaking the same process for 32 local authorities, which are not in fact local, is more important than considering the checks and balances of the process specifically. Okay, but is it not reasonable to contend that there is no point in having checks and balances in the system if they are never exercised? They have been exercised in this case, they have not previously been exercised, so that has got heightened public attention because those statutory powers have been exercised. Now, when we had the old Government boundary commission in front of us, I asked the question, do they think that they get things right all the time and there shouldn't be a review process? And they said, well, that's for others to decide. Now, I don't think that any politician around this table would say that they always get things right and the checks and balances that we have is an election every four or five years. What's on the table is the current statutory process. Do you agree that the current statutory process should be exercised if the minister feels that it's appropriate, but you contend that the statutory process should change, and if it should change, what should that look like? Well, in this instance, if the minister had not rejected it, we'd be losing 10 councillors in the islands. I think that that, as an outcome, would be much worse than bringing up the question of, why is it that we are getting to a juncture where the recommendation is being rejected? I think that the checks and balances should be respected, but in this instance, while we agree with the ministers, it poses a problem for the independence of a commission and the confidence in the system. Miss Councillor Neill has still got the opportunity to speak and I'm still following a line of questioning. I'll let you in in a second. I'll leave that sitting, but I find it confusing to say that there should be a check and balance in the system, and, of course, it should be exercised, but you're concerned because it has been exercised. There seems to be a conflict there that, perhaps, as a committee, in partnership with the Government and others, we have to explore some of that, but I don't know if you want to clarify that or we'll just bring councillor Neill in. Just to quickly clarify, perhaps the tension is becoming because, in this instance, we agree with the ministers and that it should be rejected, but it poses a concern to the robustness of the checks and balances. However, in this instance, it should trigger why the rejection happened. The rejection happened because the rules and regulations and the methodologies used did not work for all the communities in Scotland and we should be looking at why they didn't work. That surely helped, for that was my lack of understanding your last answer. Thank you for clarifying that, Councillor Neill. Not liking the outcome isn't the same thing as questioning the methodology. You can be unhappy with what's decided, you can be unhappy with how it was decided. Should there be checks and balances, absolutely, in my own personal view, is that the more independent the commission is, that would be better than having politicians, whether they are local or national. You could argue that, in this instance, the input for the minister, in some instances, was helpful in other instances, but the perception from the public, as soon as politicians get into the role of deciding what happens to politicians, seems a bit a fish to me, as a personal view. How would you improve the process, Councillor Neill? There needs to be much more discussion on how the methodology has worked out and, again, a personal point of view, I would prefer a commission to be more independent and less subject to direction from ministers. That's a personal point of view. But it's still with a check and balance maintained within it? Yes. Okay, but what that looks like, we have to explore further. Couple of supplementaries, Mr Whiteman and Mr Gibson. Yes, thanks. This is getting on to the substance of this. There's a difference between checks and balances, and the final decision maker, minister is exercising a role of a final decision maker as to whether to accept any of the recommendations or not. Within that role can provide checks and balances, but also, potentially, within that role can do other things. A, do you think that the system needs to be reformed? That's a simple question. Secondly, one type of reform might be to follow David O'Neill's argument that the process is objective and independent, but that the criteria that are used to arrive at boundaries and councillor numbers and all that can be more geographically sensitive. So the same criteria do not need to be used in different parts of Scotland, and that, further than that, councils themselves should have some independent role in adjudicating on those kinds of criteria. It is satisfied that the process that is being going through will deliver for it, but it does not have the power to make those decisions, but it is satisfied that it buys into the process at the beginning. Therefore, even if it is unhappy with the outcome, it realises that the process has worked well for them, for Argyll and Bute, for Aberdein, for whatever. So my first question, does the system needs to change, and secondly, is that one way in which it might be improved? You probably got one cut at this because of time constraints, so if you want to answer both of those questions, now's your time to do it. So are local politicians better at interfering with an independent process than national politicians, councillor O'Neill? A short answer to Andy's question is yes, yes. I'm in a way that Andy's something that I would be hard pushed to find in to disagree with Andy's summation. Keith Brown? Yes. It is an independent commission, and thus we should respect its objectivity. However, that doesn't mean that there shouldn't be a check in balance. Whether we want to leave that in the hands of politicians, I think that's to be discussed. Absolutely. No, through the chair, please, Mr Wightman. All systems can be improved. There's no way that we couldn't actually look at something that was better. I think that much more transparency in terms of criteria that are being used and in the methodology is crucial in terms of having confidence in the approach. Mr Repke? I think that if it's not a one-size-fits-all, it's a difficult task to work out what that new arrangement would look like. I think that it's difficult to be clear on criteria that's going to suit the geography of Argyll and Bute, and how you match that up for other areas, I'm not sure. It's a difficult question about how you come up with a solution that fits all of Scotland. The devil for me would be in the detail of what came forward if it was to try and address our concerns about geography and what that meant in terms of the impact on electoral participation, if people saw that as a plus or a minus. Time constraints means, Mr Wightman, I apologise. I can't let you back in or try other MSPs wishing to make a comment in relation to this line of questioning, Mr Gibson. In three point eight of your submission, Mr Repke said throughout the consultation phases, that the council was consistently clearing its objection in opposition to changes proposed by the LGBC, but they didn't seem to listen. They're an independent body, but what do we do with that independent body? Simply doesn't listen when you get cross-party support. I mean, there's an issue there about should it be local councils or should it be national politicians, but surely East Lothian is another example where you have all the politicians and, in fact, everybody else all singing from one hymn's sheet, but the local boundary commission is quite simply ignoring them, then that indicates a clear flaw in the system and there should be much more flexibility in being able to address that before going to ministerial level. Yes, I think that I recognise the role of the boundary commission and the fact that they had to fit within the rules that they had set, and we recognise, I guess, that our case, when it didn't succeed with the boundary commission, had to be made to the minister, and I suppose that my take on it was that the minister had a discretion to look beyond the criteria that the boundary commission were looking at and to recognise the strength of local feeling and the community feeling about that, and that they had that discretion, and that's why I would be in favour of retaining the checks and balances. I think that there has to be a transparency of how that is operated and what the reasons are for that, because if the reasons aren't transparent then there is the possibility of people regarding it as some sort of political fit-up or whatever, so I think that we made a good case to the boundary commission, but I understand the reasons why they didn't choose to follow that, and that's why the council adopted the approach that it did in taking forward its argument. That's convenient. This was actually the second area that I wanted to explore. Time is really against us, so I understand that. You've covered a lot of ground and asked a lot of the questions that I would have asked. You also took Elaine Smith's question earlier on, but you can ask your question now. Would you remove politicians from the end of the process altogether? Looking for a purely objective methodology, that would seem like the appropriate outcome. Anyone else want to comment on that? Member, that's local politicians as well, gentlemen. I think that there's scope for discussion in just how you do that. That's a mabie's eye, mabie's knoll. I'm really looking for these last two answers. Mr Vaughan, please give us an answer to this one. Again, I think that it's one of the things that needs to be examined, we're fully in Mr Rippke. I'm an officer of the council and I work closely with politicians all the time, so I see the benefit in having a political check and balance in areas of governance. On that note, we will end the evidence session there. I thank everyone for giving evidence. I suspect that this is something that a local committee has looked at irrespective of the outcome of the local government boundaries, because there are wider issues there that have clearly been at play for a number of years irrespective of those current decisions. I thank you very much for giving evidence this morning. Can we suspend briefly while we change witnesses? Thank you. Okay, we continue now with our evidence in relation to the local government boundary commission for Scotland's fifth electoral review, and we move to our second panel. I welcome Joe Fitzpatrick, Minister for Parliamentary Business. Good morning. Brian Peeray, Relationship Manager, Local Government Policy and Relationships Units. Good morning. Tony Remain, Senior Policy Officer, Local Government Policy and Relationships Unit, Scottish Government. You are all very welcome this morning and can invite the minister to make some opening remarks. I thank the committee for the opportunity to explain our approach for the decisions that we took on the fifth review and to answer any questions that members might have. I know that the committee has already taken evidence from the local government boundary commission for Scotland about the review. The commission is an independent body, so it is not for me to comment on the detail of how the commission went about its work and produced its recommendations. What I can do is describe how and why we took our decisions on those recommendations. My starting point in considering the fifth review's recommendations was that the commission is an independent, expert body and had produced its recommendations after extensive discussion and consultation. Therefore, there would have to be a very strong reasons for not accepting those recommendations. At the same time, the Parliament has given ministers the responsibility to decide whether or not to accept the recommendations. That being so, it was both right and necessary that I should consider the recommendations for each area and decide in each case whether or not to recommend them. That is what I did. In doing so, I took into account the representations from councils and other stakeholders, both on the commission's proposals as they were developed and on the final recommendations after they were submitted to ministers. I also took into account the likely impact of the islands bill that was announced by the First Minister in the programme for government. Crucially, we had to consider the implications of not implementing any of the recommendations, for example, on parity between words in a particular council area. I hope that that is a helpful overview of the process that I went through. Of course, I am happy to answer any questions that members have going forward. That is very bright. Thank you very much, minister. I will take other members in a second. Just very briefly, can I start from where we ended off the last evidence session, and that is the statutory process itself, where you, as Minister for Parliamentary Business, have the statutory duty to be the check and balance within the system and, effectively, as was mentioned earlier, the final decision maker within the system. First of all, do you believe that there should be a check and balance in the system, and what are your thoughts on where that final decision should sit within the process? Clearly, it is for me to work within the parameters that Parliament has previously agreed. The decision that it is a ministerial responsibility would have been to stand back to 1970. 1973 is the basis of the current legislation. Back to 1973, the Parliament then would have looked at the whole arrangements for local Government elections back in 2004. On that occasion, the Parliament, which I was not here, must have felt that the arrangements whereby the independent commission carried out the review and ministers are given the responsibility to, due to, in fact, to agree or disagree, was satisfactory. I have had to work within the arrangements, but, of course, that would be something that is for the Parliament to look into, whether that would be appropriate going forward. I asked, at last meeting of this committee, to the local government boundary commission for Scotland whether or not they thought that they always got their decisions right, and whether there should be a check and balance in the system, and they can helpfully said that for others to decide. Do you think that they always get their decisions right? I think that the commission has done a very good job. It has worked very hard to listen to communities up and down Scotland. We can see that, if you look at the reports that they produced, the engagement that they had with communities, the way that they managed to make changes to initial proposals, to take account of stakeholders' councils, community councils and others' concerns going forward. However, in spite of that, with the restrictions that the commission has, there were five areas where I felt that, while they had done as good a job as they could with the constraints that they had in terms of their statutory duties and the legislation, that I felt that it was better not to approve those recommendations. I am saying that anybody gets anything wrong. When you look at the specific instances that I had to make a decision, it was my responsibility to decide whether to implement those recommendations or not. That statutory power has never been used before. Is my understanding the lifetime of this Parliament in relation to that statutory duty? I would disagree there. In 2006, the then minister in charge of boundaries would have made a decision, and he would have made a decision on each of the local authority boundaries to either agree or disagree. As it happened, he agreed on all occasions, but nonetheless, I am quite sure that, knowing that the minister, as he was, will have taken his responsibility as seriously as I did and made his deliberation on each individual council area. I phrase my question clumsily, which is that the power exists and the duty has been exercised, but changes were agreed. You have got every confidence that previous ministers will have taken their responsibilities very seriously. It could be argued that if you get a check-in balance in the system and no organisation or individual will always get everything right, and that check-in balance is never exercised in terms of blocking those changes that perhaps previous ministers were timid or did not want to be seen to get involved in the process. I do not believe that the minister in question would be true. The other difference in 2004 was that there had to be boundary changes, so the option to reject would not have been possible because we were moving from single member wars to SDV, so that would be the difference. However, I am absolutely certain that the minister in question will have taken and looked at every proposal carefully before he agreed. Before I take Mr White, I want to note that I am going to take you in next. You said that it was for Parliament to decide whether or not the current process with yourself or the Minister for Parliament, which has been the final decision maker, was on for Parliament to have a look at and examine. What is your view in relation to that? Just as significantly, is the Scottish Government up to have a view of that process to see if there is a way to improve the mechanisms by which a final decision is made? I think that it is always appropriate that we review our processes. As I said, the decision on the process for final ministerial approval well predates my being an MSP. We have indicated that there will be an election bill coming forward. Those are things that we can look at in the round to see whether our arrangements are still appropriate. However, for this process, we have to follow the legislation as it stands. I am pretty clear that there will be some areas that are very grateful for the fact that I did have the ministerial ability to reject some of the decisions. I am sure that there are some of the details of that, Mr Whiteman. That gets to the nub of the question, because you mentioned and commended the Boundary Commission for its work and its independence and all the rest of it. However, the evidence that we have heard is that people were not satisfied not just with the outcomes, but they analysed that their lack of satisfaction with the outcome was in relationship to the methodology that was adopted. You, as a final decision maker, as I understand under section 17 of the 1973 act, the secretary of state may, if he thinks fit by order, give effect to any proposals made to him by the Boundary Commission, either as submitted to him or with modifications. You have, your officials will correct me if that is not the substantive legislative basis of your powers, but you have very, very, very wide latitude to do nothing or something. As you correctly pointed out the last time that this was done, effect had to be given in order to introduce a new electoral system. In 1973, there was a Westminster Government, there was no Scottish Parliament, News and Minister are accountable to a democratically elected Parliament, we have a new electoral system that has been in place now for over a decade. As a politician interested in good governance and having heard some of the evidence and hopefully read some of the evidence about the dissatisfaction that people have with the process, is it not? Do you not have the view that you are very, very wide powers of decision making the final instance? Although exercising this instance to the satisfaction of some of those in whose interests you exercised it is perhaps not appropriate because the system seems to have some defects? I think that it is two separate questions. I think that whether it is best that there is a final oversight of the recommendations of the independent commission or not is one matter, but the idea is as to whether the system could be improved. I think that we should always look at systems and processes. Could it be that there might have been some sort of process prior? When the commission was setting out their methodology, could there be a parliamentary process at that stage? I do not think that there would be anything that would have stopped Parliament asking the commission to come in and explain their methodology. It has never happened before, so it is probably why it did not happen, but maybe that is something that would be flagged up in the future. It is always better if you are making changes that they are buying to the methodology before any decisions are made. It is much more difficult when you see what that methodology means for a particular area and to then say, well, that is not good because I do not like the outcome, so it is better if we can get people bought in at the start. That is something that might be worth investigating. I will follow up on the timing, because one of the concerns that you made has come at quite close to the next election. Given the complexities of parties selecting candidates and multi-member wards, it is not quite as easy—my party in particular has quite complex processes and gender balancing and all the rest of it—we have to start quite early. Do you think that we could improve the timing of the process so that people standing for election have a little bit more time to know the circumstances in which they will be standing? When the timescale was originally envisaged, the elections would have happened before. The elections would have happened a year earlier, so we would be doing it after the election. We have changed the period of election for local government to five years because of changes at Westminster in the last Parliament. It would always be better if it was not as close. That said, once the commission had made the recommendations as a period of time that I had to wait, that would have taken us into a recess. I think that the good practice is six months before, so we are ahead of that. I am interested in what the minister was saying about the methodology. He hinted that he thought that MSPs should perhaps have some role in setting the methodology, the criteria for any independent commission. Following on from what the convener was asking, I wonder if he could be clear on whether he thinks that there should be a political role at the end of the process, which he is clearly able to exercise at the moment. Should that change? In terms of a role for the Parliament, it is very important that the commission remains entirely independent, but I do not think that that would stop probably this committee asking the commission to come and explain and discuss their methodology. I would have thought that the commission would probably find that helpful as well. I do think that the commission has to be entirely independent. The question is whether there is a role at the end for a ministerial decision clearly for the Scottish Parliament boundaries, but there is not. As I said, if I did not have the responsibility to make the decisions that I did, then the five areas that I did not accept the recommendations would have been less happy, and so I guess that in those cases people are grateful that I did have that power. It is for Parliament to decide. The legislation was set in 1974. The legislation was looked at again by the Parliament in 2004, so Parliament must have been satisfied that it was appropriate that this was someplace where there should be ministerial oversight. Do you think that there is merit in Parliament looking at it again? As you rightly point out, ministers do not have a final say on Scottish Parliament boundaries, but they do in local government. I think that it is a reasonable thing for us to continue to look at processes in our ways forward. I think that that is perfectly appropriate for that to be looked at, as to whether people think that that is appropriate or not. It was quite a heavy responsibility that I bore over the summer recess, because I knew that, in each of the cases, the councils and representations that I received were deeply felt in each case, so I took them all very seriously and spent a great deal of time making sure that I understood the concerns that people had with recommendations and what communication there had been with the commission. Can I just ask one more on the methodology? You are right that the commission is independent, but would it be right for somebody else—let's say politicians—to set the methodology that they use and then leave them to get on with it? The commission will follow whatever rules are laid down, so they are going to do their work based on statute. If there is a feeling that there should be changes to that, they would follow that. In that case, they have followed the regulations to the letter to come up with their methodology, but ultimately it is their methodology and they are an independent body. That is the first time in 20 years that councillor numbers have been looked at across Scotland. That did not happen to any great extent previously, so clearly they had to look at their methodology for that. It is a matter for them as an independent body what that methodology was. The evidence that we heard from Rewis panel was quite clearly and distinctly that the methodology is far too rigid on councillor numbers, plus or minus 10 per cent. It does not necessarily take any local account into account in particular circumstances. The issue of parity is clearly a blunt instrument, in particular where STV words cover huge geographic areas and island communities. We also heard perhaps why we have to have the same system in all parts of Scotland, because the system of STV might not apply particularly well in rural areas compared to urban. One of the reasons being the difficulty in attracting people who want to stand and be councillors given a pitiful levels of remuneration if they are going to do the job effectively. I wonder what the Scottish Government is going to do to try and take those concerns and issues on board so that the next time we have a review it will be much more acceptable across the board. Two things. First of all, a major piece of work that we have announced is the islands bill, which will have significant implications. That was the reason why I felt that it was not appropriate to approve changes to the whole island authorities, because clearly the islands bill could potentially have significant impacts on the entire authority. The islands bill will potentially have impact on other authorities as well, so North Ayrshire in terms of Arran as one example. There will be examples in Argyll where the islands bill might have implications. Obviously, I would not want to pre-empt the Parliament's scrutiny of that legislation, but potentially that legislation would allow single or two-member wards in populated island communities. That will help and that will give the commission some flexibility. Clearly, there are other areas in mainland Scotland where we need to look to see what further flexibility we can give to the Boundary Commission so that they can protect communities, because that was the one thing communities wanted to stay as a cohesive unit was overarching. Although there were a few occasions where communities were saying, no, we do not want to be one community, we want to be two communities so that we have more councillors covering X town. Mr O'Neill said in the last session that we should not have a one-size-fits-all approach. That is true, and we should look at how we can make this. We have now had STV in place for a number of years, so it is appropriate that we should look at how we can make that system. I 100 per cent agree with STV that it is the best system to provide democracy, but we need to look at how that can better represent local communities. It certainly is not in terms of accountability, but in terms of the minimum disruption to voters, when I asked the local government Boundary Commission question this last time, saying that in my constituency that our communities are 40-minute drive apart from each other, the answer really was, that was a mistake that was made 10 years ago by the previous commission, and we have just effectively went along with it. I mean, surely we have to get back to first principles on that. The only other question that I would ask convener is, in an area where there is cross-party agreement that the local government Boundary Commission is simply wrong, East Lothian, for example, surely the minister should really take on board those local concerns if there is no opposition to what the local authority collectively is saying, that all the parties are agreed, communities are agreed, then surely the minister should go along with that, rather than accepting a local government proposal that clearly goes against the grain across the board. Talking in general terms when I looked at correspondence to the commission and to myself, I did also look at what changes the commission had made, so whether the commission had managed to make some concessions towards Stake particular councils and also I had to look at what impact that we would have on Paratysol, for instance, in East Lothian. I think that it would have been a 16 per cent underrepresentation for Musselborough had I not accepted the recommendations. That is significant within one council area for an area to be underrepresented by that, that I felt was beyond what we were talking about. By the air concern is that they are losing two councils when they feel they should have at least the same or more surely, and East Lothian is in a similar position? Yes, so East Lothian was one of the councils where the commission did listen to the representations and their initial proposal was to reduce the council number by two, and the commission heard the comments from the council and adapted their proposals to just reduce it by one. While the methodology being straightforward, the commission should have reduced that council's number by two, listened to representations that it received and came back with a proposal that reduced it by just one. I thought that it was an example that the commission was listening and engaging and trying to respond as best as they could going forward. I can later. Thank you, minister. Some of the proposals that we had in front of us and yourselves had very little or no response from communities and councils. Others that were much more volatile had massive response by communities. You know, hundreds turning up to public meetings, et cetera, to express a view and an opinion. You have touched on your outlook on one-size-fits-all or not, as the case may be. We have touched on in this forum before about the low turnout that sometimes happens at local government elections. We understand the criteria that the commission used, but it would be quite useful to get a flavour of the criteria that you used in trying to balance that and square some of the circles that you had to deal with. There were some that were quite clear-cut and others that were very controversial. There was no question that there were different levels of engagement in the process across Scotland. I took that into account when I was going through. I didn't just look at the representations that I received as minister, which I received representations from a number of areas, from MSPs, councils and some individuals, but I also looked at the representations that the commission had received during its process. You are right to say that in some areas there was very little engagement, and that might be something that the commission wants to look at, as to how that could be made more engaging. I think that if people feel ownership of the process, then there may be more likely to take part in the election that then comes. We all want higher turn-outs. I think that that is something that the commission would want to look at going forward, as to how to engage people through the whole process better. Looking at the five local authority areas where the changes were rejected, what representation did the Scottish Government receive from them? Was there anything different in the representations that they made that meant that their requests were successful? Obviously, I had to look at the whole breadth of evidence in each area. In the two island areas, I did not accept that it was a specific request because of the Islands Bill that was coming that came from the Islands authorities. I felt that that was appropriate. In the case of Argyll, Dundee and the Borders, there was significant concern about changes to historic local communities, which was clearly significant in terms of what was being done. The commission had not managed, whereas in other areas the commission had managed to make changes to the initial proposals. The constraints that were placed on the commission in terms of legislation meant that they were not able to accommodate those concerns in the other three authorities. Just a quick follow-up. With those five, did they reflect greater public participation in the submissions? There were significant representations from the public in all three. From the public, from cross-party politicians, council, it was of a different scale. Just following on from that, in the evidence that we got from E-Sloody, they tell us that there was a lot of public engagement, counselling engagement with their case. What they say specifically in the evidence is that you, your shelf minister, gave no indication as to what the repercussions of not accepting the commission's recommendation for E-Sloody might be. They feel that, given that you had rejected several of the commission's recommendations, the argument that the review had to have a consistent approach across the whole of Scotland fell. Clearly, they feel that if you could reject some of the commission's recommendations for one or more council areas, you could have rejected it for other council areas, specifically there, because that is the case that they are making. I just wondered if there was anything that you felt you could add to what the repercussions might be of not accepting the commission's recommendations for E-Sloody? I need to be slightly careful about what I say specifically in terms of E-Sloody, given that I understand that they have decided that they may want to take legal action, so I think that I would need to be careful of what I say. However, in general terms, across all councils, I looked at the representations that I had, I looked at the implications for communities of accepting recommendations. For instance, one of the things that I was looking for was were their community council areas that were being divided, and that was something that I put a degree of weight on if that was there. Crucially, I also had to look at the implications of not implementing the recommendations based on parity, and in the case of Musselborough in particular, it would have been a 16 per cent underrepresentation for the citizens of that town. That is a huge disparity within a council area, so it would mean that some people would have less representation than others by a big chunk. If I could go back to the methodology, the deprivation factors seem to have made a late entry to the process, and I wonder if you could give us any comment on that. As I said previously, the methodology is a matter for the independent commission. Obviously, they made Government aware of the methodology that we are going to use going forward. I think that if there are future changes, there may be more scrutiny of that by Parliament, but that would be a matter for Parliament. Ultimately, the commissioner is an independent body, and it is for them to determine their methodology. My final point, if I may, would be that you raised the issue. In fact, you enlightened us somewhat to the whole process by saying that the process was meant to have been carried out after the last council elections, because they should have been a year ago, and the timetable changed. We might answer some of the questions of why that all seems to have been done in such a rush, given political parties' difficulties in getting their elected members in place. Given the fact that you mentioned the possibility of judicial review, if judicial review is where to come forward, that might, in some way, put a spanner in the words of the process, as it might stop the process. What a wonder is, given the evidence that we have taken and some of the issues that have emerged, can the process be halted for the next election? Can it be stopped and picked up again after the election? The orders are laid and the new boundaries are in place. It is clear from that, for any council, if they choose to spend public money on a judicial review, that would be a matter for those councils. The answer is no, it will go ahead, those will be the boundaries and nothing can stop it. They are the boundaries, that has happened. Thank you for clarifying that for us. Can I ask a little bit more about the methodology? I know that you will say that that is set independently by the local government boundary commission and that statute would have to change for them to then amend that methodology to take into account the kind of things that Parliament or others may wish to… You mentioned, right, okay, let's go back to the first thing you said then, minister, because I saw your official Mr Peerie shaking his head in relation to that, right? So you said that the methodology is set independently by the local government boundary commission for Scotland. That's the situation. How, under what criteria, do they then choose that methodology? What are the strictures by which they operate to come up with their independently agreed methodology? The kind of reason that there's a difference, because in terms of the methodology, that's a matter for the commission as an independent body, but in terms of when they draw the boundaries within a council, then clearly they need to do that within the statutory rules. One of the rules is that every ward has to be three or four members and that's a concern that's caused issues in the island community. So that, for instance, that's a restriction that is placed on them. They cannot, as the law stands just now, say that in the case of Arran, for instance, there should be one member ward still by SDV, obviously, but one member ward for Arran and that is one of the things that we're looking at to see whether the island's bill can change, but maybe you want to talk a little bit about the methodology and the rules. Yeah, just to add, I think it is important to make the distinction between the statutory criteria that the commission and indeed ministers have to work to in producing recommendations and then deciding on them and the actual methodology to produce those proposals. At the moment, the statute does not say anything about the precise methodology that the commission is supposed to use, so if you like, the legislation sets out the ends, which are the criteria that are to be applied, but not the means that is to say it doesn't dictate what methodology should be used or at the moment neither is there a provision for that methodology actually to be subject to ministerial or indeed parliamentary approval. I would just add as well. The commission were pretty open, they were very open in terms of describing what their methodology was. We are well aware, of course, that there were a lot of concerns expressed about that methodology. There were quite a lot of comments from some stakeholders that they had issues with various aspects of that methodology, although I think it's fair to add that others actually did welcome it and in particular the use of deprivation. So I think it's not perhaps about lack of transparency. I think the commission did explain at some length what the methodology was, but the legislation doesn't dictate that. It is for the commission to decide what methodology to use in producing the proposals, so legislation dictates how those proposals should look in terms of the rules that the commission operates under. Let me just explore that a bit further in a second, Elaine. Sorry. I think—I understand it now, Mr Perry. What the statute does say is that the end, which the local government boundary commission is tasked with arriving at, and the independent set of methodology to meet those ends, but the ends are outlined in statute. So if anything was to be reviewed in theory, it would be what statute says and what those ends should be in theory. That might impact on how the context by which the methodology is shaped. What we're trying to get towards, I suppose, is that we're very clear about that their hands are tied in terms of the statute that says that it must be a three-member or a four-member ward. That's pretty clear. We could easily—it would be consequent—we could easily say that it could be one member or two member wards rather than have a four-member ward. That could be rolled out across Scotland, because that could be an urban issue, as much as it is a rural issue. That's clear. Any other influence that Parliament would have in relation to other factors such as deprivation of parity would be determined by what statute says in terms of what the ends to which the local government boundary commission for Scotland has to operate at? I guess that will stand for the last time that the boundary commission decided to include rurality as part of the methodology. That's easy for you to say. The decision was made to take sparsity of population into account in determining ward boundaries in the past. That was something that they decided to do. They looked at their methodology and decided that the multiple index of deprivation would be another approach. That's another factor that they would take into account. I'll quit whilst I'm possibly behind with my line of questioning. Elaine Smith indicated that she wanted to supplement your first, Mr Gibson. Thank you, and it was probably for Mr Peddy, rather than the minister, although that's up to the minister to decide who's going to answer. It's more about the act rather than methodology. Is it correct that the act requires the commission to consult with councils on any proposal for a period of two months before the proposal has been put to public consultation? If that is a matter of the act requiring it, what are the repercussions? If the commission doesn't do that, it doesn't consult with the council. First of all, to be clear, everything that I've seen, the commission has followed their statutory responsibilities in every case on every point, but I'll ask Brian if he wants to answer further. That's a fair summary of what the legislation says that there is to be consultation with councils and then subsequently consultation more generally, and that is laid out in the statute. The way that the commission approached that, although I don't think that this is specifically required by statute, is to have a two-stage process so that the commission can have separate consultation processes about council numbers and boundaries, but in both cases they applied the statutory rules about consultation. Your opinion is, and having looked at it, that they did apply those statutory rules. Thank you, convener. It's about consistency, this question. When I asked you about East Lothian, you talked about Musselborough, it would be left with a population of 16 per cent less or something like that. Basically what the council has said is that creating a single Musselborough war bolsh is divided between Musselborough West and East, but by doing this, the commission has weakened community ties between several communities in the closest town, and there's also been a knock-on effect that has actually impacted on other wards. The reason that I'm asking that is about consistency is because all of my wards have an average of 16 per cent more electors than Ruth's constituency, both of which make up North Ayrshire. For example, she's got 3,000 electors, or slightly less, per council. I've got 3,500. We've taken Sparsity, which was just mentioned. My constituency is 80 per cent of the make-up geographically of North Ayrshire, so I don't understand why within one local authority area that would be the case. I should, on numbers, have 18 councillors in Ruth 15 when, in actual fact, we'll have 16 in this constituency, we'll have 17. Surely if we're going to be consistent in terms of parity within a local authority, then those anomalies shouldn't arise. I think that there will always be a degree of anomalies, and in fact, if we're talking about providing the commission with more flexibility, there might be what we're actually in fact then saying that there will be more anomalies. There is a balancing act to be had. I think that the most significant issue for North Ayrshire was the situation of Arran, and hopefully that's something that the island's bill will manage to rectify, but that will then mean that the council will have more variation in the size of wards, so as well as having three and four member wards, there would be potentially one and two member wards. I'm not really sure why Arran, which is about three and a half per cent of population in North Ayrshire, would change that balance so dramatically for the whole of all the mainland wards. I've got five wards in my constituency. Arran only is in one of them, obviously, so why are all the others under-represented relative to Cunningham South? I mean, we've got high levels of deprivation, so that's not an issue. We've got more sparsity of population in a bigger geographic area. There's clearly a balancing act to be done in the main. The commission will try to get to as close to parity as it always can. Those changes will have improved parity within North Ayrshire Council, as it will have done in all the other councils. The proposal, the recommendations from the Boundary Commission, will have improved parity. Sorry, I've done the reverse, because there was much more balance before this than there was in terms of numbers per councillor, so it's actually... The three additional councils have effectively went to Cunningham South, so it's made the disparity higher rather than lower that existed prior. I don't think that they will have looked at the parliamentary boundaries as... I don't mean in a parliamentary sense. All I'm saying is that every one of the 10 words should surely have, in effect, the same number of voters per councillor. That's the only argument I'm trying to make. I mean, particularly given the fact that some of the boundaries originally which have been retained were completely out of kilter with local communities anyway. I mean, you've got parts of Bith, you cross a road and you're in a ward with Port and Cross, which is a 30-40 minute drive away. A complete nonsense. Into the knowledge of Port and Cross. Of course you haven't, but if you could maybe say a little bit about that. It's just about consistency. I mean, what I can say is, in terms of the representations that we received from North Ayrshire, North Ayrshire was one of the councils which agreed with deprivation being a factor. There was, I think, some concern about the fact that the 10 per cent cap had maybe not allowed North Ayrshire to increase to the extent. Other issues were around—the commission managed to retain proposals that had the best solution to maintain parity and improve the representation across the whole council area, but it gave weight to the council's argument on the CCP when it was making its decisions about the workload of the councillors. It's clear that the commission in making its decisions listened to what the council were saying, what the representations they received from the public going forward, and at that stage made their changes. Okay, can I maybe just move on slightly? I think that Mr Gibson has helped to illustrate quite an important point, which is that he was making the case for consistency and parity in the local authority area, for which he is a constituency MSP. In the earlier evidence session, the councillor was talking about not wanting a one-size-fits-all policy and that there was talk about that artificial 10 per cent rule in relation to changes to achieve parity or otherwise. Two local authorities were very articulate and helpful in our understanding of the situation, but one was delighted with the process because it got the outcome that they wanted, and the other one was dissatisfied because it didn't get the outcome that they wanted. Does that not just remind us, the NVIDIA's decision, that any final decision maker has to make, where as long as people get the decision that they want, they are happy and when they don't get the decision that they want, they are not happy? I think that Mr Gibson was outlining some of the conflicts within that, particularly in relation to how Aaron might want better representation, but that might go against the parity argument that Mr Gibson was making. I put that back on record again because it brings us to the evidence session about who the final decision maker should be, how we get a better understanding of that process and where that power should sit. As we draw towards the end of the evidence session, I think that committee members would welcome some additional thoughts that the minister might have in relation to that. As I said earlier, it is appropriate that we look at our processes to see that they are fit for purpose going forward, but clearly in terms of the fifth review, we have the rules and the statute that is in place, and that is what the deliberations and the work of the commission and my determinations were made on. I will check with the committee members whether there will be any further questions. Thank you very much, minister. Just on what Mr Gibson says, he obviously has a great knowledge of his own constituency, so he can put forward some of those cases. We heard evidence—well, we actually had Ian Gray at the committee asking some questions on behalf of his area as well. I think that one of the issues is definitely consistency as a problem. Of the areas that he did make changes, I mean one of those areas was Dundee, which presumably you have a great knowledge of as well in the personal basis. The bottom line is about—we have the methodology. We can question some of it, particularly on deprivation, making a late entry for example, but in terms of consistency, I think that the bottom line has to be whether or not this whole area has to be reassessed as to who is making decisions, whether it is better to be final political decisions, who knows about the areas. Is it the independent commission? If it is the independent commission taking evidence, then should they just be left alone to get on with it? If it is not them, then who is best placed to have the local knowledge and the local examples? Councillor O'Neill earlier raised the issue of councillors in some ways, perhaps being best placed. I wonder if you have any final comments to make on that. I certainly could say that when councils and councillors as well as community councillors and members of the community and MSPs wrote to the commission or myself, then I looked at their submissions very seriously. I think that there would be—just like MSPs do not are not allowed to set boundaries for Scottish Parliament elections—it would be the same conflict if councillors were setting the boundaries for local council. However, as powers for elections in general come to this Parliament, it is appropriate for us to look to see whether we want to try and bring those systems together. I am certainly keen that, where possible, we have the same systems in place for local government as we have in place for Scottish Government, and in terms of some of the changes that we are making in terms of some of the orders later today, it is about bringing those systems together. However, as more powers come to this Parliament, it is absolutely an appropriate time for us to look at how those powers are used and to make sure that we have appropriate levels of scrutiny. Thank you very much, minister. I think that that concludes our questioning, but you are staying with us. Before I suspend briefly, I will put on the record again that we want as many voters to exercise their right to vote at next year's council elections, and we are having a round table at our committee next week to help to encourage voter turnout and participation. Also, just to give you the opportunity, minister, one final time, if our committee decides to look further at how to improve the process, including the decision-making at the end point, whether you are keen to work in partnership with the committee to tease some of that out. I think that I would certainly be happy to be part of that process in my officials, okay. I will say goodbye for the moment, momentarily suspending, but I know that you are staying with us, so suspend briefly. Okay, I welcome everyone back to the local government committee agenda item 3. We now move on to supporting legislation. The committee will take evidence on the draft representation of the people postal voting for local government election Scotland amendment regulations 2016. I welcome back Joe Fitzpatrick, minister for parliamentary business, and I also welcome Lee Scott, elections policy adviser and Roddy Angus, elections policy adviser Scottish Government. The instrument is laid under a thermative procedure, which means that the Parliament must approve it before the provisions can come into force. Following this evidence session, the committee will be invited at the next agenda item to consider a motion to approve the instrument. In inviting the minister to make a short opening statement, I understand that you will be speaking to not just this particular statutory instrument, but also another one that we are going to dispose of later on in the agenda. I will just put that on the record for the purpose of anyone watching, minister. Okay, thanks very much for the opportunity to set out the Government's position on the orders before you today. I think that it is generally acknowledged that the May 2012 Scottish local government elections were well run, and that is why we are only making relatively minor changes to the rules that will be used for next May's elections. The main rules for Scottish local government elections are set out in the Scottish local government election order 2011 and the representation of the people postal voting for local government elections Scotland regulations 2009, and those orders only make minor changes to those rules. However, we have made a number of amendments that are mainly to reflect wider electoral changes, most of which were made for this year's Scottish Parliament elections, such as a deadline of 5pm on the day of poll for the issue of replacement or lost or not received postal ballot papers or allowing postal ballot packs to be issued earlier and the requirement of the returning officer to record on a list the reasons why a postal voting statement was rejected. We have also made a number of technical changes that allow for more information to be provided to voters in polling stations on how to complete their ballot papers. Given that we use SDV in local government elections, that feels appropriate, and all those changes are detailed in the policy notes that accompany the orders. However, I would like to highlight one significant improvement that we have made. We have changed the definition of personal expenses, so that a candidate's disability should not affect the amount that they can spend on campaigning. Some of the disabilities can result in candidates having to incur extra expenditure, such as needing to use taxis instead of public transport or requiring a sign language interpreter, and that change will mean that any costs that are directly attributed to a candidate's disability will no longer count towards their election expense limits. At this point, I would also like to pay tribute to the work of the 1 in 5 campaign, which is a cross-party group campaigning to encourage the empowerment and increase political participation among the stable people in Scotland. Without the input of the 1 in 5 campaign, I do not think that these amendments would necessarily be coming forward, so I thank them for their help in that. In part of the order, I would also like to mention the launch of Access to Elections Office Fund, which is operated by Inclusion Scotland. It will provide grants to individuals who are standing for election as candidates in their local area, assisting them in any additional costs that they have due to a disability. Scottish Government has provided Inclusion Scotland with funding to operate and manage the scheme, as well as to cover grant payments to individuals while wishing to stand for election. I am pleased to say that the fund is going very well, with Inclusion Scotland having over 25 expressions of interest in the scheme from all parts of the country. Inclusion Scotland is now working with those individuals to take forward their applications, which will be decided upon by an independent Access to Elections Office Fund's decision panel, which is made up predominantly of disabled people and including expertise about reasonable adjustments and overcoming of physical, social and cultural barriers facing disabled people. That panel will include disabled former MSPs Dennis Robertson and Siobhan McMahon. The important thing is that, in future, any additional costs that are directly attributed to a candidate's disability will not count towards their election expense limits. That is only right that everyone should have the same opportunity to be elected as a local councillor and that any extra costs that are directly attributed to a disability should not be counted. I hope that you agree that those orders set out sensible rules for the running of local elections next May. I am happy to answer any questions that you have. I am not sure that it directly relates to the orders, but, given that the minister went a bit beyond that, I wonder whether he might wish to make a comment. I can understand if he doesn't, but we have a mention of proxy voting in the policy note. In terms of people with temporary disabilities, they often mean that someone is applying for a proxy vote at quite a late stage, because they might not have had a postal vote, so they want someone to vote for them and they do not want to be disenfranchised. What I wondered was whether the minister has any comment on the fact that somebody medical might have to sign those, so would we expect that a GP, for example, would sign such a form and not be charging for it, because someone has a temporary disability, maybe an infection in a wind or something like that that stops them getting to a polling station? It seems to me that the fact that maybe GPs are charging like they would do for a passport is something that can disenfranchise or refuse to sign the form. I think that that could be part of disenfranchising people. We would normally expect people that are making use of the emergency proxy system to probably actually be in hospital more so than those that are housebound for a particular reason. There is nothing in the legislation that actually says whether or not a GP can charge for the signature. I am afraid that I do not know if it is set out in any of the health code regulations or not. It might be something that the committee might want to take further consideration of at some point. We will look at that, but am I right in saying that an emergency postal vote would still be available to somebody in that situation? On the postal vote, they would have to know well in advance. As you say, it is not part of this order, but let us take away that thing. I think that that is part of the process that we always need to look. The aim is to make sure that the maximum number of people are able to exercise their votes. If there are any areas that we can improve, we should look at that. Obviously, we would need to consult with stakeholders across the councils, but we will look at the point that you are making. I think that that would be very helpful. Thank you, Elaine. Any other questions? There have been no other questions. We now move to agenda item 4, which is to formally consider the status that we have just been talking about. I am calling for it to recommend approval of the draft representation of the people postal voting for the local government election Scotland, amendment regulations 2016. We now enter a formal debate. Am I just checking to get the process right here in the minister? For accuracy, there is now the opportunity for debate should members wish. Would anyone like to contribute to the debate? The question is that motion S5M-1514, in the name of the Minister for Parliamentary Business, is approved. Can I ask it if we are agreed? We are agreed. Thank you for your patience there. We now move to agenda item 5, which I am just going to note, because I said at agenda item 3 that we would look at the statement from the minister in relation to, and I will just put it on the record, evidence and draft Scottish local government elections, amendment 2, order 2016. We have done that and we have afforded members the opportunity to ask questions if they wish. I will now move to agenda item 6. Formal consideration of S5M-1515, calling for the committee to recommend approval of the draft Scottish local government elections, amendment 2, order 2016. Again, members are afforded opportunity to enter into debate at this point. Can I just check for the record whether any member was to participate in a debate? That has not been the case. Can I ask the minister to move motion S5M-1515? Moved. The question is that motion S5M-1515, in the name of the minister for parliamentary business, be approved. Are we all agreed? The committee will report on the outcome of this instrument and the previous instrument in due course. At that stage, I thank the minister and officials for giving evidence. The committee will now move on to agenda item 7, which is to consider a number of negative instruments that are the representation of the people variation of the limit of candidates' local government election expenses. Scotland, amendment 2, regulations 2016, SSI 2016, forward slash 263, and representation of the people absent voting at local government election Scotland, amendment 2, regulations 2016, SSI 2016, forward slash 264, just about got there. Those instruments are laid under the negative procedure, which means that their provisions will come into force unless the Parliament votes on a motion to annul the instruments. Parliament will note that the DPLR committee considered that it did not need to draw the attention of the Parliament to the instruments upon any grounds within its remit and put on record that no motion to annul have been laid, and I invite members to make any comments on either of those instruments. There have been no comments, and I invite the committee to agree that it does not wish to make any recommendations in relation to those instruments. Are we agreed? Okay, excellent. Okay, and as previously agreed, we now move into private session.